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Vegaphobia, vegephobia or veganophobia is an aversion to, or dislike of, vegetarians and vegans. [1] [2] [3] The term first appeared in the 2010s, coinciding with the rise in veganism in the late 2010s. [4] [5] Several studies have found an incidence of vegaphobic sentiments in the general population. [6] [7] [8] Positive feelings regarding vegetarians and vegans also exist. Because of their diet, others may perceive them as more virtuous or principled. [9]
Three French Veggie Pride activists used the term végéphobie meaning discrimination against vegetarians, in a 2011 document. [10]
British sociologists Matthew Cole and Karen Morgan used the term vegaphobia and the derived adjective vegaphobic in a 2011 study, meaning prejudice against vegans specifically. [1] [11] Later authors used the term veganphobia (vegan-) in this sense. [12] [13]
Subsequent studies defined vegaphobia as the dual aversion to vegans and vegetarians together. [7] [14] [15] A 2019 study of vegaphobia in this sense added the term vegaphobe for a person with vegaphobia. [8] Previously, the Swiss-Polish actor and producer Jola Cora had also used the dual aversion concept but called it vegephobia (with an 'e'), in a 2013 conference talk titled "Vegephobia, what is it?" [16]
"In the media, in pop culture and even in progressive, enlightened polite society it is still widely acceptable to make fun of vegans", writes Farhad Manjoo in a 2019 New York Times opinion piece against mocking vegans. [17] Manjoo cites findings from a 2015 study by Canadian psychologists, that the general population rates vegans more negatively than atheists and immigrants, and tolerates vegans only slightly better than drug addicts. Vegans get more negative ratings than vegetarians, and vegan men receive more negative ratings than women. Vegans are rated better if they are motivated by health reasons than if their veganism is driven by ethical or animal rights concerns. [6] [17] [18]
Among around a thousand Belgian Flemish meat eaters surveyed in 2016, vegaphobia against vegetarians was more common among men than among women, among older more than younger people, among people with a firmer intention to keep consuming meat, and among less educated people. [8]
These findings are consistent with vegans who feel discriminated against by people that eat meat. [14] In 2018, a survey of over 1,000 British and American vegans from the weight-loss application Lifesum found 80% of respondents to have experienced some form of anti-vegan prejudice. [19] The fear of being stigmatized when becoming a vegan also keeps some meat-eaters from transitioning to a vegan diet. [20]
Vegan chocolate has been criticised with thousands of "mean tweets", a fact the British chocolate company Cadbury drew attention to in a 2022 campaign. [21] [22]
Meat eaters rate vegans less negatively when they have been reminded that meat comes from animals, a survey of 300 US residents found. The reminder also increased their discomfort while eating meat. [7]
A study published in the Sex Roles journal in 2023 found that men on vegan diets are commonly perceived as less masculine, a stereotype shared across genders and surprisingly even among some female vegans. This reflects a deeply ingrained association between meat-eating and masculinity, highlighting widespread and unexpected biases even within the vegan community. [23]
Academic Laura Wright stated in 2015 that media organizations and wider discourse routinely mischaracterize vegan diets, highlighting situations where media outlets reported the death of children as being from a "vegan diet" rather than the parental neglect that was the actual cause. [24]
A 2011 study found that British media discredit vegans through ridicule, and portray veganism as difficult or impossible to maintain. [1] The six most common vegaphobic statements found in these media were, in order of frequency: ridiculing veganism, erroneously equating veganism with asceticism, perpetuating the myth that veganism is difficult or impossible to sustain, describing veganism as a fashion trend, portraying vegans as sentimentalists, and defining vegans as hostile. [1] The study found that of 397 articles, 20% were neutral, approximately 5% were positive and 75% were negative. [1] In 2018, it was revealed that a British food editor had sent a vegan an email that mentioned "killing vegans one by one". [25]
On social media, some vegans have also been attacked for their choice to have sexual relations only with other vegans. [26]
There are many theories to explain negative attitudes towards vegans. [25] Negative attitudes against vegans and vegetarians are most commonly found in people with conservative and/or right-wing beliefs, especially the ones associated with Abrahamic religions, [14] [27] [28] being often most pronounced in far-right individuals and groups. [29] For some right-wing adherents, eating meat is not only a delight, but also a part of their attitudes towards life. Thus, they can perceive those who advocate against meat consumption as a threat to their way of life. [15] A survey of about 1,000 participants showed that vegans are perceived as a threat mainly by older and less educated people, and by meat eaters who are particularly convinced of their habit. [28] A 2019 study found a positive correlation between world-views rooted in social dominance ("social dominance orientation") and a negative perception of vegans. [27]
One explanation for vegaphobia is founded on what is sometimes called the meat paradox: many people who eat meat do not like harming animals. Vegans can remind meat eaters of this cognitive dissonance, and one way to resolve this inner conflict and reduce dissonance is to maintain prejudice against vegans. [14] [30] [31] [32]
Another proposed reason for vegaphobia is that meat eaters may feel judged by vegans and vegetarians for eating meat. Discrediting ethical vegans as do-gooders is then a way to invalidate the judgement of oneself. These negative attitudes against vegans are stronger when vegans are thought to think of themselves as morally superior. [33] [34]
While meat eaters may have an inner conflict about the killing of animals for their food, this explanation of vegaphobia may not hold up to environmental reasons for avoiding meat. Environmentalist meat eaters may not see a conflict in eating meat because they see their individual environmental impact of meat consumption as low. [35]
Vegans may not always be discredited for ideological reasons. Sometimes the reason may be that the vegaphobe cannot share food with them. [36]
Vegaphobia has been framed as an intersectional problem connected to masculinity, race and gender identity issues. [37] [38] [39]
In the early 1990s, McDonald's started describing its French fries as vegetarian when they, in fact, contained beef-derived flavouring, leading to a ten million US dollar settlement in 2002 for misleading Hindus and other vegetarians into eating food against their conscience. [40]
In 2020, a parliamentary employee of the nationalist Alternative for Germany called someone who ordered vegetarian food in the canteen of the German parliament a pejorative term, saying "we are going to get you". [41]
Philosopher Oscar Horta links vegaphobia to discrimination against vegans, which he observes, among other instances, at the workplace. [42]
Vegans have in individual instances been terminated from jobs or excluded from the applicant pool for their veganism. [43] [44] A survey by the law firm Crossland Employment Solicitors found that among "over 1,000" UK-based vegan employees, nearly a third felt discriminated against at their workplace. [45] A London NHS trust (a unit of the UK's National Health Service) in 2017 put up a discriminatory job advert for an occupational therapist (OT) saying, "Unfortunately, OTs with vegan diets cannot be considered", and that "Veganism or other highly restrictive eating practices cannot be accommodated." When challenged by The Vegan Society, the trust changed the advert and apologized. [46] [44] [47]
A vegan was denied a Swiss passport by local voters, [48] and people have thrown KFC chicken at vegans in England, [49] in both cases as a reaction to their lawful animal rights protest. In 2018, William Sitwell, then editor of the Waitrose Food magazine, responded to a request for a vegan column by proposing "a series on killing vegans, one by one". [50]
A vegan college student from Bristol was told to watch bull castration and visit an abattoir or fail her course in animal management. The university reconsidered after support from The Vegan Society. [51]
A primary school in Solihull forbade a five-year-old from bringing soya milk to school. It took three months and the help of The Vegan Society for the father of the child to change the school's mind. [52]
When learning about a vegan person's diet, many nonvegans list all the animal-based foods that they like, without consideration for how this can make vegans feel uncomfortable ("I just love bacon"). [53] :363
Some vegans use the term veganphobia (with an 'n') when discussing prejudice and discrimination against vegans specifically. [12] [13] [54]
The Unión Vegana Argentina in 2019 petitioned the Argentine government agency National Institute Against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism to include vegaphobia in its discrimination mappings. [55] [56] [57]
The application of the term "vegaphobia"—and the extent to which it can be compared to other forms of discrimination—is a somewhat divisive issue. [5] [58] [59] Sophie Wilkinson of Grazia opined in 2018 that discrimination against vegans (unlike sexism, racism, and homophobia) does not go beyond the level of microaggressions. [60] She also wrote that "discrimination is about being treated differently for who you are, not for what you choose to do", implying that being a vegan is not who you are, but rather what you choose to do. [60] Others have distinguished between two kinds of veganism, lifestyle and ethical. [58] Veganism motivated by ethical beliefs about animals was ruled to be a protected belief in the United Kingdom under the Equality Act in an unfair dismissal lawsuit in 2020. [61] [62]
Veganism is the practice of abstaining from the use of animal products—particularly in diet—and an associated philosophy that rejects the commodity status of animals. A person who follows the diet or philosophy is known as a vegan.
Vegetarianism is the practice of abstaining from the consumption of meat. It may also include abstaining from eating all by-products of animal slaughter.
Carol J. Adams is an American writer, feminist, and animal rights advocate. She is the author of several books, including The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (1990) and The Pornography of Meat (2004), focusing in particular on what she argues are the links between the oppression of women and that of non-human animals. She was inducted into the Animal Rights Hall of Fame in 2011.
A flexitarian diet, also called a semi-vegetarian diet, is one that is centered on plant foods with limited or occasional inclusion of meat. For example, a flexitarian might eat meat only some days each week. Flexitarian is a portmanteau of the words flexible and vegetarian, signifying its followers' less strict diet pattern when compared to vegetarian pattern diets.
A plant-based diet is a diet consisting mostly or entirely of plant-based foods. Plant-based diets encompass a wide range of dietary patterns that contain low amounts of animal products and high amounts of fiber-rich plant products such as vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds. They do not need to be vegan or vegetarian, but are defined in terms of low frequency of animal food consumption.
Christian vegetarianism is the practice of keeping to a vegetarian lifestyle for reasons connected to or derived from the Christian faith. The three primary reasons are spiritual, nutritional, and ethical. The ethical reasons may include a concern for God's creation, a concern for animal rights and welfare, or both. Likewise, Christian veganism is not using any animal products for reasons connected to or derived from the Christian faith.
The practice of vegetarianism is strongly linked with a number of religious traditions worldwide. These include religions that originated in India, such as Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism. With close to 85% of India's billion-plus population practicing these religions, India remains the country with the highest number of vegetarians in the world.
Conversations regarding the ethics of eating meat are focused on whether or not it is moral to eat non-human animals. Ultimately, this is a debate that has been ongoing for millennia, and it remains one of the most prominent topics in food ethics.
Environmental vegetarianism is the practice of vegetarianism that is motivated by the desire to create a sustainable diet, which avoids the negative environmental impact of meat production. Livestock as a whole is estimated to be responsible for around 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, significant reduction in meat consumption has been advocated by, among others, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in their 2019 special report and as part of the 2017 World Scientists' Warning to Humanity.
Vegetarian and vegan dietary practices vary among countries. Differences include food standards, laws, and general cultural attitudes toward vegetarian diets.
The earliest records of vegetarianism as a concept and practice amongst a significant number of people are from ancient India, especially among the Hindus and Jains. Later records indicate that small groups within the ancient Greek civilizations in southern Italy and Greece also adopted some dietary habits similar to vegetarianism. In both instances, the diet was closely connected with the idea of nonviolence toward animals, and was promoted by religious groups and philosophers.
A low-carbon diet is any diet that results in lower greenhouse gas emissions. Choosing a low carbon diet is one facet of developing sustainable diets which increase the long-term sustainability of humanity. Major tenets of a low-carbon diet include eating a plant-based diet, and in particular little or no beef and dairy. Low-carbon diets differ around the world in taste, style, and the frequency they are eaten. Asian countries like India and China feature vegetarian and vegan meals as staples in their diets. In contrast, Europe and North America rely on animal products for their Western diets.
Pescetarianism is a dietary practice based on the consumption of fish and shellfish to the exclusion of land-based meats. The practise incorporates seafood into an otherwise vegetarian diet, and may or may not include other animal products such as eggs and dairy products. Approximately 3% of adults worldwide are pescetarian, according to 2017–2018 research conducted by data and analytics companies.
Vegan nutrition refers to the nutritional and human health aspects of vegan diets. A well-planned, balanced vegan diet is suitable to meet all recommendations for nutrients in every stage of human life. Vegan diets tend to be higher in dietary fiber, magnesium, folic acid, vitamin C, vitamin E, and phytochemicals; and lower in calories, saturated fat, iron, cholesterol, long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D, calcium, zinc, and vitamin B12.
Ethical omnivorism, omnivorismor compassionate carnivorism, is a human diet involving the consumption of meat, eggs, dairy and produce that can be traced back to an organic farm. Ocean fish consumption is limited to sustainably farm-raised and/or ethically and wild caught, without contributing to illegal poaching.
Carnism is a concept used in discussions of humanity's relation to other animals, defined as a prevailing ideology in which people support the use and consumption of animal products, especially meat. Carnism is presented as a dominant belief system supported by a variety of defense mechanisms and mostly unchallenged assumptions. The term carnism was coined by social psychologist and author Melanie Joy in 2001 and popularized by her book Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows (2009).
Melanie Joy is an American social psychologist and author, primarily notable for coining and promulgating the term carnism. She is the founding president of nonprofit advocacy group Beyond Carnism, previously known as Carnism Awareness & Action Network (CAAN), as well as a former professor of psychology and sociology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She has published the books Strategic Action for Animals, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows and Beyond Beliefs.
The psychology of eating meat is an area of study seeking to illuminate the confluence of morality, emotions, cognition, and personality characteristics in the phenomenon of the consumption of meat. Research into the psychological and cultural factors of meat-eating suggests correlations with masculinity, support for hierarchical values, and reduced openness to experience. Because meat eating is widely practiced but is sometimes associated with ambivalence, it has been used as a case study in moral psychology to illustrate theories of cognitive dissonance and moral disengagement. Research into the consumer psychology of meat is relevant both to meat industry marketing and to advocates of reduced meat consumption.
Vegetarian ecofeminism is an activist and academic movement which states that all types of oppression are linked and must be eradicated, with a focus on including the domination of humans over nonhuman animals. Through the feminist concept known as intersectionality, it is recognized that sexism, racism, classism, and other forms of inter human discrimination are all connected. Vegetarian ecofeminism aims to include the domination of not only the environment but also of nonhuman animals to the list. Vegetarian ecofeminism is part of the academic and philosophical field of ecofeminism, which states that the ways in which the privileged dominates the oppressed should include the way humans dominate nature. A major theme within ecofeminism is the belief that there is a strong connection between the domination of women and the domination of nature, and that both must be eradicated in order to end oppression.
a new survey from Lifesum, a weight loss app, of UK and US-based vegans found that eight out of 10 respondents had experienced "vegaphobia" which it defined as a prejudice against vegans.
The fact that vegans are often considered worse than nonvegans epistemically, morally, and in general due to vegaphobia, explains some cases where they are intentionally treated worse, and also why vegans are in many cases pressed by others to quit veganism.
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